Information, whether primary or secondary, comes in bits and pieces, often without any clear connection to anything else we’ve collected. It may be a snippet as small as a name with some associated data item, without anything more to help us make a judgment about linking the item to a particular individual. So, when we receive information, what process do we take to determine whether it applies specifically to our research? How do we determine if information should become evidence and then proof, and what is the difference between these three?

• Does it refer to the particular individual in whom we're interested?
• Does it reflect what really happened?

In answering the first test, there are no hard and fast rules for determining whether information applies to the person we’re researching. We simply look carefully for any other individuals to whom it may also refer, and then for a combination of circumstances that eliminates other contenders and gives us good reason to believe it belongs with our subject.

The second test seldom gives a "yes" or "no" answer. More often, we’re left with some degree of probability that the original informant got it right, and that the information came to us unchanged. If there’s a reasonable probability that the information may be both relevant and right, we’ll select it and throw it into the mix with our other selected evidence, each item with its own degree of reliability.

What we have now is the information that seems most likely to lead to a sound conclusion about some family member or relationship. Sometimes a single piece of evidence tells us exactly what we want to know and is called direct evidence. More often, we have to deduce the answer from several items of information. Evidence used in this way is called indirect, or circumstantial, evidence.

Sometimes an item of direct evidence will be at odds with a conclusion reached from a collection of indirect evidence. We are then faced with weighing the relative reliability of each piece of evidence and basing our conclusion on the item or items that appear to be most reliable in reflecting what really happened.

People who have been researching family history for some time may remember library patrons eagerly seeking out "proofs" of their ancestry, by which they meant book or document excerpts they could submit with an application to join an organization that has lineage as a membership requirement. Documents, however, are only evidence, a fact most lineage societies have recognized (many have revised their terminology). Proof takes place in the mind of the beholder, when he or she is convinced that the information is correct–that it states what really happened.

We prove a genealogical or historical conclusion when we can convince ourselves, or someone else, that our conclusion correctly represents the past. Some of us are easier to convince than others. It’s nice to be able to fill in all the lines on an ancestral chart, but if the names don’t represent our real ancestors, what have we accomplished?

I have half a file drawer of information on people I fondly refer to as my "former ancestors"–information I collected from undependable printed collections of secondary information. "Someone who went to the expense and trouble of printing it," I reasoned, "must have checked it out." Not so, I soon learned from sources of more reliable information. I had to consign these people–kings, nobles, and commoners alike–to the former ancestors drawer, but I confess to retaining fond memories of them.

When the evidence is contradictory, or when a conclusion must be drawn from it indirectly, the problem of proof is more complex. Once we are convinced ourselves, we must analyze those factors that went into our reasoning process and set them down in an orderly fashion that will similarly convince others. This orderly presentation of our reasoning is often called a proof argument, but it is not proof unless someone else is convinced by it.

Most of us want to know our ancestors with a high degree of certainty. The level of certainty most family historians feel comfortable with is achieved when we meet the Genealogical Proof Standard.

As described on the opening page of The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, the Genealogical Proof Standard includes five elements:

• A reasonably exhaustive search for pertinent information
• A complete and accurate citation to the source of each item used
• An assessment of the collected information’s quality as evidence
• A satisfactory explanation of all conflicting or contradictory evidence
• A soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion

A conclusion that meets this standard can be considered proved. It will pass muster with patriotic lineage societies, and it gives more than what is required by many courts to prove relationships. Best of all, it gives some assurance that each ancestor you place on the family tree actually belongs there. Who is willing to settle for a pseudo-ancestor?

Nevertheless, we must recognize that genealogical proof is not certainty, and the best-reasoned conclusion from all currently available evidence may have to be reconsidered if new evidence surfaces. When this happens, and it’s not infrequent, we should not regard it as an embarrassment. All of us who have been "doing genealogy" for any length of time have made wrong calls on the basis of less complete evidence. My half-drawer of former ancestors came about in that way–some through my own erroneous calls, others through once-accepted published lines that have since been disproved by more recently published research.

Sometimes, after all our research, we still don’t have evidence that will meet the genealogical proof standard–our conclusion may very well be true, but we don’t have the confidence that meeting the standard provides. That doesn’t mean our work has been in vain. We should record and report our conclusion, but carefully label it "probable" or "possible," reflecting whatever degree of confidence the evidence justifies.

Computers have greatly simplified the recording of genealogical data and the reporting of conclusions. All of the widely used, lineage-linked genealogical data programs provide for entering information into records for individuals, which can then be assembled to produce FGR forms, charts in a variety of formats, and even narrative-type reports using either Register or Quarterly numbering systems.

Many family historians now enter information directly from the source into laptop computers. Some record each bit of information into a separate individual record, adding as a note or attachment whatever additional information the source provides. Only after they complete the identification process described earlier is the information merged with the "master" database.

Proof is what takes place in people’s minds when they are presented with evidence and a clear, logical explanation of how a conclusion was reached from it. When the evidence and explanation meet the Genealogical Proof Standard, the conclusion is accepted as factual. Otherwise the conclusion should be qualified as probable or possible.

Donn Devine. "Reliable Information, Whatever the Source." Ancestry 19:1 (Jan/Feb 2001), 44-47.

Donn Devine. "Evidence and Sources–How They Differ." Ancestry 15: 3 (May/June 1997), 26-29. Note that the term evidence was used in the sense of sources, rather than as individual information items selected for their reliability. The latter sense is now the usage of the genealogical community, as reflected in the BCG Manual above.

Elizabeth Shown Mills. Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian. Baltimore: GPC, 1997.

Return to the May/June 2001 Table of Contents.